The Postgraduate Forum for the History of Medicine

The Postgraduate Forum for the History of Medicine

The Postgraduate Forum for the History of Medicine is a network of postgraduate students across multiple institutions studying history of medicine topics. The Forum is open to all Masters, PhD and Early Career students and researchers with an interest in the history of medicine. This website is for students to exchange information with fellow forum members as well as the outside world.

The Forum started off life as a one-day summit at the University of Warwick in the summer of 2010. Conscious that history of medicine postgraduates rarely got chance to interact with one another, the group set out to find ways in which students could collaborate and share relevant information with each other outside of the normal institutional boundaries. They set up an e-mail list and it was agreed that in twelve months’ time they would meet again.

In 2011 the group assembled at Queen Mary University of London. From those discussions it was agreed that the forum needed better ways of communicating both with each other and other historians. This website is the result.

The features on the website are designed for forum members to gain access to information quickly as well as presenting our work and information to others who might be interested. These include the following:

The forum’s calendar is regularly updated to show upcoming events which might be of interest to historians of medicine. Events are colour coded by theme, so it should be easy to find what you’re looking for. Most days can be clicked on to take you to the website of the person or organisation which is hosting it.

The calendar also includes a history of events that have already taken place. So, where certain places podcast their seminars or have follow-up information on their conferences you can look back through the archive and follow the links to their websites.

This page contains links to other websites which may be of interest. It includes history of medicine departments, mailing lists, funding bodies, blogs and anything else on the world wide web which is relevant for students. Again, if there is anything you think should be on the list or you have a website you think would be a great resource for forum members, please contact us.

One of the goals of the forum is to facilitate communication between members. We have twitter and facebook accounts for the social-media-savvy, but we also have a discussion board. Here members are encouraged to share research findings, useful information and resources they have come across, and generally discuss any issues they may be having. It is not all about serious research, though – an off topic section is there for people to just generally talk about life, the universe and everything.